Electron beams (e-beams) are utilized in many applications, including electron microscopy, lithography, welding, opto-electron coupler/converters, and display screens. Traditionally, e-beam sources utilizing thermionic cathodes are large, expensive to manufacture, require a large amount of energy to generate an e-beam, and generally have internal pressures in the high vacuum regime, i.e., 10−6 Torr or less.
It is, therefore, desirable to provide a compact, low cost, low power e-beam source that could be utilized for various applications.